Marni welcomes Bobbi Palmer in the Life Check Yourself studio, where they delve into the journey (read: trek) that is relationships, and love. The duo look at the little self-sabotaging traps we all find ourselves in and what we can learn from them. Bobbi is the founder of Date Like a Grownup. She’s a mentor and dating coach, who’s been helping women understand themselves and their dating patterns for the past 15 years. She was a first-time bride at 47 who found her happy-ever-after at an unconventional age. In this episode, Marni and Bobbi discuss how women create patterns that they keep returning to over and over again. These detrimental patterns then turn into the cycles that go on to define their relationship behavior and their general outlook on love. Bobbi encourages women to look inwards even when the fear of rejection and failure stares back at you.  

 

Takeaways from this episode:

 - How to break the cycle

 - It takes courage 

 - Visualize what you want, it’s out there

 - Tip the balance 

 - Why do you have trust issues?

 - Look inwards to break the patterns 

It’s Not You, It’s Your Pattern [03:50]

Bobbi explains that most of us create patterns, perhaps without even realizing it. As we continuously repeat them, even though they’re yielding negative results, we end up feeling hopeless and shift the blame onto ourselves when things don’t work out the way we envisioned them. This notion of “there’s something wrong with me” is the story we’ve told ourselves because we’ve been unable to break free of our patterns. And as we get older, we get stuck in the destructive cycle. You are the one creating these patterns, and they, in turn, are creating your results. 

 

Understanding them and looking inwards is the first step, and it takes fearlessness to be conscious of the thought process or behavior holding you back when it comes to dating. But it does start with you. 

 

Finding your partner as you go through life becomes more about courage rather than how many men there are in your age range, or whether or not you’re still in shape or what app you use.  

 

Are You Afraid of … (Fill in the Blank) [06:10] 

A lot of the time, we prefer not even trying rather than attempting and failing. It’s a trap that many of us fall into where we hold on to the mantra of all men suck, or I want to be single. Because if it’s a choice we’re making, rather than an imposition, it somehow makes it okay. 

 

This is a form of self-protection born of a fear of rejection, failure and perhaps repeating the same mistakes again. We’ve all been through an iteration of this. Bobbi elaborates on how we should look at it, where it’s almost like a balance between all the fear that’s holding us back set up against the vision we have of what a loving relationship looks like. And for a lot of us, we have trouble with the second part of the balance, because we’ve never been in such a relationship and envisioning it is difficult. 

 

There’s nothing wrong with you, there’s just some things you don’t yet know.

 

Once the balance tips more towards the other side, the dream of what a relationship looks like for you, that’s when it’s time to take action, bearing in mind that it’s not always going to be 100% in par with your vision. And that’s okay, too. 

 

Make a Connection:

Bobbi’s Website

Bobbi’s Book

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